The best explanation I've heard thus far for economic crisis..(sm)

• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
  
  
  
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
  
  
  
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
  
  
  
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
  
  
  
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
  
  
  
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
  
  
  
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
  
  
  
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
  
  
  
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
  
  
  
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
  
  
  
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
  

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

• The best explanation I've heard thus far for economic crisis..(sm) - Just the big bad
  • Wow....I agree with you. Good article,,,,sm - ms

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10.   Blissful ignorance.  "The economy is not my strong suit."

 9.    Ridicule.  In an interview with the Washington Post on 07/9/2008, McCain advisor and national campaign general co-chair Senator Phil Gramm was defining McCain's plans to reform the U.S. economy.  Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."  This would be the same Phil Gramm of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate.  The legislation allowed Swiss Bank UBS to purchase several American institutions. Gramm later became a lobbyist for UBS, collecting over 750,000 USD in fees. UBS alone issues over 18 Billion USD in subprime mortgages.  

 8.    Denial.  Black Monday, 09/15/2008.  John McCain:  "The fundamentals of our economy are still sound."  A worldwide stock market crash occurred as Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and major investment bank Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America. Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 500 points, which is the biggest point drop (up to that point) since September 2001.  FTSE 100 dropped 212 points, and it was the biggest one-day percentage drop since January 21, 2008. Hong Kong, Japan and Korea stock market suspended that day due to public holiday, and they fell over 5% on the following day.   Two weeks later, we had a blacker Monday (09/29/2008) with a 777.68 point drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

 7.    Political grandstanding.  Announcement of suspending his campaign to return to DC to "lead" Congress during economic bail-out negotiations.  This effort led to a defeat of the measure when the votes were cast.  Tried unsuccessfully to use the bailout as an excuse to postpone the presidential debate.  

 6.    Flip-Flop.  Claims to support regulation.  Record says otherwise. 

 5.    Incoherence.  Threatens to fire the chairman of the SEC if he were in office, even though the president does not have the authority to do so.   

 4.    Theft of intellectual property.  Claiming previously existing mortgage buy-out proposal as his own. 

 3.    Avoid / change the subject.  Greg Strimple, a McCain top advisor:  If we keep talking about the economy, we will lose." 

 2.    Engage the politics of division, hate, fear mongering and cultural warfare with high-gear Obama smear campaign:  Ayers, ACORN, Farrakhan, Rev Jeremiah Wright, Barack Hussein Obama, etc.      

 1.    McCain’s send message to voters is to stop whining about the economy and start focusing on attacking Obama.

I would only imagine that she's lapping up all the attention as well.  I have no faith she can run this country and I never thought he would have picked a woman.  Obama/Biden...  Looking better and better.

Oh and the pic of his shoes with holes just shows he's a hard worker and does not squander money in my opinion.  Also, some workers at my hubs place of employment purposefully wear holey shoes to show they need a raise.  If management says something about the holes in the shoes, they answer with when they get a raise; gotta eat first!  Maybe Obama really is for the working class!

..."If you don't like living in America, then leave."  I guess that option would no longer be open.  This all seems to be going on right in front of us.  Maybe that's one of the reasons we have U.S. troops stationed in the United States now, to "control" those of us who never agreed, voted or signed on to this "deal."

There might be no escape from the one-world government, but I did come upon one very unique way to leave this earth. 

(To the MOON, Alice!)

The  IDEA of:

Waa, I'm Muslim, nobody likes meWaa, I have terrorist associations so nobody will vote for meWaa, I wanna take everyone's money and redistribute it evenly (that's like restarting Monopoly because you're losing)

Then, when I win, we can have a big pity party!!!!

I have gas heat, and so does my daughter.

Your mother is fortunate to have you and your sisters to help her.  Makes me worry about all the elderly people barely scraping by on Social Security who have no family.  I guess they and the other poor people are just considered to have no value and are disposable.  I guess someday I'll be disposable, as well.

I totally agree with what Putin said.  Of ALL the places in the world to force change upon, the Middle East is probably the worst one!  Change does have to come from within.  Their culture is so different from ours, and I believe we should respect all cultures that are different from ours.  Sometimes I wonder who would win an election in Iraq if Saddam was suddenly back on the ballot. When Bush debated Gore in 2000, Bush claimed to be against nation building (though he said Cheney was in favor of it, which leads me to believe that Cheney really IS running the administration, as has often been alleged).

I always watch closely when Putin and Bush have press conferences.  Putin should be called Pukin because he's always got this look of disgust on his face, as if he's about to run out of patience with Bush and his idiocy. 

I remember when we first began to brag that the Cold War is over.  I always thought that was a stupid thing to say, because it's never over till it's over.  History will be the judge of that.  I often wondered how a country full of people who were accustomed to having their vital needs met by their government as a RIGHT, rather than a privilege, could possibly survive in the dog-eat-dog, sometimes unscrupulous atmosphere of capitalism.  As far as I know, Putin isn't all that enamored with capitalism, and I'm just waiting for Russia to once again become communistic or maybe socialistic.  I guess time will tell. 

It is the thought that everyone, no matter what situation they were born in, is solely responsible for their own  misfortunes. It is the thought that what is yours is yours and you are never under any obligation to help anyone in need.  It is the philosophy that government's only duty is to fight wars and sometimes pave the roads.  It is the philosophy that if you are 80, handicapped, and have no family or vehicle in which to escape a natural disaster, it is your choice to remind in a natural disaster and the consequences are your problem.

of *the reality of O.*

They ALL spend like drunken sailors.  Didn't Clinton (at least) leave us with a balanced budget?  I have a granddaughter in Brownsville, Tx, and kids in Houston so I get a weekly report on how bad the illegal situation is.

People can blame the Democrat congress of the past 2 years and don't get me wrong, I think they all need to be sent to the moon,  but Bush and his Republican majority didn't work out so well did they?

I'll take the promise of change over more of the same.  At least we can change the change we don't like if we're of a mind to. But before we do that the "rabid" Republicans AND Democrats need to get over it.

DEFINITION OF RABID REPUBLICAN/DEMOCRAT:  A person who has such tunnel vision regarding their "party" that they can't see past the end of their nose.

I've been noticing that quite often when there is a conservative belief/claim being put forth repeatedly on this board (right now it's that Republicans always do the right thing and admit to their behavior and resign versus the Democrats who never do the right thing/can't admit their behavior and never resign), when doing research I find that the posters on this board are simply regurgitating what they are reading on the many far-right blogs/newsletters/publications.  It's almost word for word.  THere have been many examples in the past besides this most recent rant.  At this point it seems that the far-rights are guilty of being unable to have original thoughts.  Now let's see if they can do the right thing and admit it.......(laughter here, please).

On a more serious note, I never saw Clinton referred to as a serial rapist until reading this board.  Once again, upon checking this out I see multiple, multiple references on -- you guessed it - multiple far-right-crazy political blogs/newsletters, etc......you get the idea.  The thing that I find worrisome, though, is that we have been requested repeatedly not to bash Bush on this board in any fashion, yet past presidents (especially those that are Democrats) are fair game for any manner of accusations.  If we shouldn't question Bush's decisions (as an example) because of how it will look to other countries who might read this forum, how does it look to call our former president a serial rapist?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=224262&title=Elizabeth-Warren-Pt.-2

Wow, common sense!!

they knew about this for weeks -- trying to railroad dems before election.